In modern laboratories of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as in public research facilities for medicine and molecular biology, to meet stringent sanitary standards, sterile, disposable goods are frequently used, for example sleeved aprons, gloves, protective hoods, filters, bulbs, pipette tips, syringes, weighing dishes, etc. Especially in the use of pipette tips for pipetting the smallest liquid quantities, the change has been made to one-time use, because only then can it be ensured that the pipette tips have properties such as a sealed seating of the push-on sleeve on the pipette, a clean and precisely-centered tip opening, acceptable surface quality, and optimum material transparency; these features permit precise and thus reproducible dimensioning of liquid samples.
Because up to twelve liquid samples are taken simultaneously in one pipetting procedure, a large quantity of pipette tips that can be used one time are required to meet the lab requirement. For economical pipetting, therefore, infusible pipette stands that can be autoclaved and that have pipette tips disposed in equidistant rows and columns are prepared so that the pipette tips can be removed easily from the pipetting implement. These pipette stands can, if needed, be sterilized with the pipette tips.
Frequently, the pipette tip stands are still provided manually with unsterile pipette tips, which are supplied in bags containing a thousand pieces; this is a painstaking and time-consuming task.
To avoid this manual labor, pipette tips are offered already disposed in equidistant rows and columns in cardboard or plastic containers. These containers have a plurality of recesses or holes that match the dimensions of the pipette tips, into which the pipette tips are sorted.
The containers with pipette tips can already be sterilized, provided that the nature of the container permits this. This is only the case for expensively produced, environmentally damaging plastic containers. However, this is not the case for less expensive, and therefore economical, cardboard containers. The pipette tips provided therein must be transferred into the infusible pipette tip stands which can be autoclaved and are provided for them for sterilization.
An adapter plate equipped with a plurality of upwardly-oriented receiving pins, which correspond to the push-on sleeves of the pipette tips and are disposed with standardized row and column spacing, can be used to transfer the pipette tips disposed in the container. In this instance, the receiving pins of the adapter plate, which is turned down, are inserted from above into the push-on sleeves of the pipette tips. Following this, the container is turned with the pipette tips and the adapter plate and is removed with the pipette tips from the adapter plate. Then the pipette tip stand is placed, with its top side turned down, with the pipette tips onto the adapter plate. Finally, the adapter plate is turned again, with the pipette tips and the pipette tip stand, and is removed with the pipette tips from the pipette tip stand.
In this complicated transfer procedure, both know-how and great care are required to obtain the desired result without individual pipette tips standing obliquely and hindering the procedure. Moreover, this type of procedure has an adverse effect on the required cleanliness of the pipette tips prior to sterilization.